A Shard of Me
by Patent Pen
Summary: "Dear me." There was a clear streak of smugness and sarcasm in her voice. "I haven't kept you up and waiting for me, have I?" He wanted to tell her no, but he could never hold a straight face when he'd had this much to drink. "You know that you have." Set after the war against the Night King is over.


Jon had seen as Sansa sat down with the Hound and observed them from the corner of his eye. There'd been smiles on both of their faces, she'd taken his hand, and he could have sworn that Sandors eyes had gone soft. His body language transformed, his voice wasn't booming. They made an odd couple, the redeemed knight and the lady of Winterfell, but they scarcely seemed to notice it themselves.

In short, the situation was strange, and Jon wasn't sure he liked it very much. It hit something in him that he wasn't sure how to place, but it felt wrong.

When Sandor laughed, Jon almost spat out his ale. The lack of mockery or sarcasm in his eyes confused him, but then again, Sansa was a strange woman. She brought out things in people, strange and hidden things, and apparently now, a genuine laugh from the Hound himself. Even for him, it was a bit too much to stomach.

He'd seen the burned man as he'd rebuffed another wench, and found it strange. He couldn't imagine that there were many girls who had willingly offered themselves to him through the years, his appearance and reputation had surely seen to that. Now he was a war hero, almost an honorable man, and that tended to have its perks. And yet he had dismissed the girl as though she was a particularly annoying fly.

Sansa didn't stay by him for long, and after she stood to leave, she gave a slight nod. As she strode across the room and exited through the main door, Sandors eyes followed her, and as soon as she'd left, he went after her. At least, Jon was almost certain that was what had happened. Then again, many people were starting to slip away from the feast to go off to bed or other "activities", so he couldn't technically be sure, but his gut was convinced. Why were they being so secretive about it though?

He heaved an annoyed sigh and left for his solar as soon as it wasn't considered impolite anymore.

The two pitchers of wine that he'd brought with him were slowly growing emptier as he sat and stared into the fire, it's soft crackling sound and the light snoring of Ghost being all he heard. He was high up in the castle, few other noises reached up here, and people were starting to get tired anyways. It was well past midnight, and even soldiers fell asleep at some point.

He'd left his door ajar so he'd hear her as she came back to her chambers. If she came back, he mused to himself. If. What a silly notion, of course she would return, where else would she go? The wine was getting to his head, but he poured himself another cup anyways. Then he waited for what felt like about an hour. Ghost noticed her first, Jon had been close to falling asleep, but he quickened as the wolf got to his feet to greet her.

"Sansa?" His voice was a lot slower and tired than he'd expected it to be. She stopped in her steps and he heard her fuss with Ghost before she replied.

"Jon?" Moments later the door swung open, and there she was. Braids gone, her hair just a tad too messy, her cheeks flushed pink. She leaned herself against the doorway and looked at him through heavily lidded eyes. There was no doubt that she was as tired as he was, but there was a smile gleaming in her eyes that he hadn't seen in quite a while. She raised her brows at him in question. "Is there anything I can do for you?" He nodded towards the chair.

"Indulge me?" And she did, closed the door behind her and took off her cloak and gloves. He tried to read her face, but didn't gather much more than that she seemed happy. After having looked around the room, she drew the conclusion that there weren't any other cups in the room, and drank straight from the pitcher that was still almost full. A few drops of blood red wine dripped down from the left side of her mouth, but she either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Dear me." There was a clear streak of smugness and sarcasm in her voice. "I haven't kept you up and waiting for me, have I?" He wanted to tell her no, but he could never hold a straight face when he'd had this much to drink.

"You know that you have." He turned the cup in his hands for a few seconds before he looked back up at her again, and decided that there was no use in dancing around the point. "Did you go with ser Clegane?" And her smile was much too pleased for his liking.

"My my…" She started, eyes boring into him. "Nothing gets past you I see." But that was all that she gave him. Jon cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair.

"I guess it's not my place to ask…" He looked away from her and stared into the fire, and even in his drunk mind he was wondering why he was asking her about it. He'd heard the rumours about Arya and Gendry, in a castle you could rarely keep secrets for long, but he'd never brought that up with her.

"No, it really isn't." He heard her gulp some more wine, and felt a stitch of shame in his chest for having brought any of this up, but it soon passed. "And yet, here we are." As he looked up at her again, her eyes sparkled, teased him. "So, you gonna ask me or what?" Jon ran a hand through his hair. He might as well ask, though he wasn't sure of why her answer mattered so much to him as it did.

"Well excuse me, but did you just fuck the Hound? You walk in here, looking like you've been…" But he couldn't look at her, and from the corner of his eye he could see her face go blank. He heaved an exasperated sigh. "Look, you don't have to stare at me like that, you knew all along what I was about to ask." She gave him a small shrug.

"Of course." Her voice was clear and flat. "But I wasn't prepared for you to sound so…" Her eyes flickered around the room before they landed in his again. "Jealous?" He felt something in his chest snap.

"I'm not jealous." And there was more hardness in his voice than he'd like there to be. "I'm just concerned that-" But she stared him down.

"Right, of course not." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Of course you're completely different from all other men that I've ever met." He downed the rest of the wine in his goblet and put it down on the table between them, perhaps a little too forcefully.

"Well, I did return from the dead and all that." She gave him a sickly sweet smile.

"I'll give you that." Sansa put her elbow on the chair and rested her chin in her palm. "And what if I did fuck him? What business is that of yours? As far as I know, you haven't interrogated Arya about her affair." Jon felt as though his stomach slowly filled with cold water, and he rubbed his face in his hands before he looked up at her again, but her face told her nothing.

"Well did you?" She crossed her legs and pulled a loose thread off her dress.

"I gave him something that he wanted from me ever since we spent time together in King's Landing." He could have sworn that his heart just stopped in his chest in the middle of a beat.

"Oh." His voice was small, but Sansa looked almost bored. It wasn't fair.

"He wanted me to sing to him." He frowned at her.

"Sing?" She shrugged in that irritating way again, like she hadn't just been toying with him at all.

"Yes." She took a deep drink from the pitcher, eyeing him closely, and he knew that whatever he'd been trying to hide had definitely been exposed now. "He's saved me more than once, and I don't know if I'll ever see him again, with all this war business going on… I'm sure you understand." He stared at her in utter disbelief.

"You sang to Sandor Clegane?" She smiled cheekily at him.

"Stranger things have happened you know."

"But… your hair?" She cocked a brow at him.

"I undid my braids because they'd been pulling at my scalp all day."

He felt like an absolute idiot.

"Oh."

The sound of the howling wind and the dying fire filled the void between them. The smoke from a burnt-out candle gave of a sharp smell, but didn't drown out the wine he smelled on his own breath.

"You're not like Arya." He said finally, voice strangely distant.

"I know." But she didn't look at him.

Another moment of silence went by, and it hurt. When he spoke again, his voice was but a whisper.

"You're not like anyone."

The tension was thick enough to be cut with a knife, but he had no idea of what he should do next.

"I can't stand your queen." She said finally, closing her eyes with a sigh.

"I know."

He reached out a hand to her, and she took it, looking at him with an intensity that scared him a little. Then she gave him a smile, a smile that made him forget the world around them, and he knew in that moment that he left a part of himself with her forever.

"I could sing to you, if you'd like." He nodded silently, wiping a hot tear from the edge of his eye, and she let go of his hand and moved to sit on the floor. Ghost snuck up to her and lay down between her and the fire, and she looked up at Jon, gave him an imploring look and patted on her lap.

He went down to her, rested his head between her legs in the soft fabric of her dress, and looked up into her blue, blue eyes, red hair shielding them from the world. He let one of his hands rest on Ghost, and the other nestled itself in her skirts. She undid the knot in his hair and brushed it out carefully with her fingers.

In this one moment, he was just a man, and she was just a woman, and everything was right in the world.

And as the fire died, she sang him to sleep.


End file.
